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Johnny can still remember the days he was enchanted by the fields. He used to walk outside in the summer nights and bury his bare toes in the soft mud and look up at the dancing stars for hours. He can remember being mystified by the way the sunset cast fire over a wavering sea of grass, and he used to run around for hours in that green ocean gently greeting all of the animals. Johnny is pretty sure that the last time he was happy coincides with the last time he loved this land.
Then his mom leaves them. And a part of him goes with her. That part of him that searched for treasures in the woods or danced in the kitchen at night. That part of him that laughed. That part of him that was happy. His mom walks out on them and rips his damn heart out of chest.
Before Johnny’s life fell apart, back when he thought his dad would have help on the farm, Johnny dreamed of leaving the fields. He loved them but he wanted to see more. He wanted to travel and go to school and deep deep down wanted to meet handsome men in clubs and classes and dance with them and curl up with them and touch them. And then his mom leaves and everything falls apart and the farm that was once a place to play becomes a goddamn cage he resents every day.
He flutters against the bars of the farm like an injured bird and drinks until the pain of slamming against the cage is dulled. His nan, bless her fucking heart, worries in her stoic way. Comments on the drinking when no one else will and sits up until he comes home at night. He feels guilty every morning that he sees her but brushes it off with his brusque rudeness. But both of them know that behind all that posturing his hungover, throbbing brain chants “failure, failure, failure” every morning. A mantra he can’t seem to leave behind; a prophecy he fulfills himself every day.
(His nan thinks he starts avoiding her because of that shame he feels. In truth though, Johnny can’t bring himself to explain to her that some days looking at her reminds him just how fucking long he’ll be trapped on this farm. An ever revolving planet pulled into his father's desperate gravity. Both of them stuck to him and the farm.)
So his nan worries and his father becomes more of a curmudgeonly shell of a man and Johnny drinks himself insane and life goes on as much as this can be called life.
And then Gheorghe comes into their world.
Johnny fucking resents him at first. He’s beautiful and composed and smart and respectful and can actually keep the farm running in a way Johnny could never. He’s everything a son should be and everything Johnny isn’t. So he hates him for it.
(And he hates the way Gheorghe makes his heart flutter and reminds him of the shadow of possible happiness he used to feel so many years ago. Johnny can’t bear to fall in love right now. Would actually truly die to be rejected or to be happy and have it yanked away. He can’t do that again. Can’t be left again. Better to drive him away now.)
Gheorghe is there when his father yells at him for the calf’s death. He should be used to his father's disappointment by now but there’s something so much sharper about the pain of fucking up with Gheorghe there to see. Johnny wants Gheorghe to think highly of him. Wants him to like him. Wants to not fall in love with him.
But Johnny’s a failure. Been a failure will be a failure, and so he fails at not falling for the Romanian man.
Johnny starts to become obsessed with Gheorghe’s hands. His eyes constantly tracking the gentle way they handle the lambs and the confident way they make repairs to the farm. He starts to dream of what it would feel like to have those hands touch him. To worship him and cradle him and handle him. But Johnny doesn’t deserve that. Can’t have that. Shouldn’t have that.
But the need to be touched becomes overwhelming for Johnny. He’s stopped drinking as much now that Gheorghe is here (and Johnny pretends that’s not directly related to Gheorghe’s presence and his pathetic need to seem better then the fuck up he is) and being sober brings up so many feelings he has been trying to tamp down for years. The need for human contact builds and bubbles and claws at Johnny’s stomach and throat. God he wants to be held so badly it makes him nauseous, and he doesn’t know how to handle this soul crushing yearning. So Johnny does the only thing he knows how to do: he fucks up. He pushes and niggles at Gheorghe just to get some reaction out of him. If he doesn’t deserve to be touched with love he can manage being touched out of anger. It’s more familiar. It’s easier to get over. It’s better than the nothing Johnny’s gotten for years, and isn’t that just the most pathetic thing about his life.
Gheorghe puts him in the mud and Johnny successfully gets his mouth on him. It’s exhilarating and perfect and so dirty. Johnny’s bruised and a little aching and hopes that that will be the end of it.
(Johnny ignores the little voice in the back of his head that whines at the lack of being held. The lack of a bed. The lack of love. He’s fine with this. This is good enough for Johnny. He can handle this.)
And then Gheorghe flips the fucking script and upends Johnny’s carefully constructed web of “ok”.
That night Johnny goes for aggressive again. Thinks he can sate his need the same way he did that afternoon but Gheorghe stops him. Doesn’t pin his hands down, doesn’t force his body to do anything, doesn’t throw him around. Gheorghe cradles his hands instead. Licks at the wound on his palm. Runs his fingers reverently down Johnny’s sides. Kisses him. Johnny’s never kissed anyone before. Kissing has promises attached to it that Johnny doesn’t deserve. Kissing means something tender, means something loving, means something lasting.
It makes Johnny short circuit. He can barely even reciprocate, so overwhelmed with the crashing surf of loving pleasure Gheorghe commands to break over him. He is floating away in this ocean of tenderness , drowning in these foreign waves. When Johnny finally is able to come up for air he thinks he might cry. Something breaks in his chest and sticks in his throat and makes it so he can barely even breathe. His mantra of failure is shut out with a new one: the chanting pattern of Gheorghe’s name. God he fucking loves him. Johnny thinks this might be what breaks him all the way.
There’s a moment after their romp in the hay when Johnny sinks into the daydream that this might be real. That this might last. That maybe Gheorghe won’t leave like his mother did. They run wild together in the field, and Johnny smiles like he used to. Loves the grass like he used to. Does stupid things like skinny dips in the little pond that’s on the farm like he used to. It’s cleansing and joyous and makes Johnny feel like maybe this farm doesn’t have to be a cage anymore. That if he shared it with someone he loved he could make a real life here instead of running through the motions day after day until the alcohol takes his liver and he dies. Johnny starts to entertain the idea that maybe he could be happy.
Then Martin strokes out and Gheorghe is unsure if he can stay at the farm and Johnny feels that cage slam shut around him again, and god why did he ever think he could be happy. Better to finish this now then wait for the inevitable heartbreak. It’s easy to fall into the drink again, less easy to follow the guy into the bathroom but Johnny still goes. The chant of failure in his head is so loud it silences any noise of pleasure. Johnny is left feeling nauseous and dirty and so fucking alone.
Johnny had thought that that would be the end of it. Gheorghe would leave and Johnny would get over it just like his dad and take care of the farm until he died. But instead Johnny finds himself sitting at the table looking at how vacant his dad is and how worn down his nan is and thinks “I can’t do this. I can’t take this.” Gheorghe’s fucking ruined him. He’s shown him what love and happiness actually feels like and Johnny can’t go back. Johnny has failed over and over again but he wants to stop. He doesn’t want to be a fuck up anymore. He doesn’t want to die in these fields alone and miserable. He wants Gheorghe and he wants to laugh again and he wants to sit in their bed and learn Romanian and feel fucking loved for the first time.
His nan got the address of where Gheorghe went off to. She’s always known Johnny better than he’s known himself.
Johnny feels so out of place on the Scottish farm. Feels everyone’s stares and their whispered words and shrinks in on himself. Above all though, he mentally berates himself for ever allowing Gheorghe to feel like this. For being so horrible to him when he first arrived. It makes Johnny want to fall to his knees and beg Gheorghe’s forgiveness if only he could fucking find him. He ends up falling asleep instead, the whirlwind of emotions finally slamming into him like a speeding train and promptly knocking him out.
When Johnny wakes Gheorghe is standing above him, and god Johnny could see him everyday for a hundred more years and still just the sight of Gheorghe would make his heart stutter. And Johnny tries to apologize but the words stick in his throat. Whatever had detached from his chest all those weeks ago during their first fuck in the barn still chokes out what he wants to say. But Johnny came all the way out here, and he’s been a failure all his life but not now. Not for something this important. Johnny might not have had the words to keep his mom from leaving them, but he finds them for Gheorghe.
They take the train back together. They curl up in the seats and Johnny lets himself sink into Gheorghe’s warmth and feels safe and content. They’re going home. There will still be hard moments for them. The town will not gather round Gheorghe and hold him tight with welcoming arms. Johnny will still have days when the wait of the farm on his shoulders is crushing and buries him in the drink. There will be days that they will be harassed for being two men. Days that Johnny can’t overcome the screaming sounds of failure. Days that Gheorghe misses his family. But even with all of that, there will also be love. There will be handcrafted cheese and dancing in the kitchen. There will be swimming and laughter and picnics for no other reason than to get to watch the sunset. There will be nights when Gheorghe and Johnny sit with their bare feet in the mud and look up at the riot of constellations scattered across the night sky and fall asleep in each other’s arms. There will be happiness and tender touches and cuddling at night in that single bed pressed against each other from ankle to chest.
The cage of the farm will finally be busted open wide and Johnny will be able to fly safely home to Gheorghe’s arms.